French investigators are hoping a notorious serial killer will finally solve the mystery of what happened to a nine-year-old girl who disappeared on her way home from school 17 years ago.
Michel Fourniret, known as the Ogre of the Ardennes, was jailed for life in 2008 for killing seven girls and young women. He subsequently admitted other murders, including that of the British language student Joanna Parrish in 1990, and has been linked to other killings.
Now police hope he will throw light on the unsolved case of Estelle Mouzin, whose disappearance still haunts France. The breakthrough comes after Fourniret’s ex-wife, Monique Olivier, who acted as his accomplice in many of the kidnappings, rapes and murders, withdrew her alibi.
Detectives have found the schoolgirl’s DNA on a mattress at the home of Fourniret’s late sister and carried out extensive searches at properties linked to the couple but have failed to find her remains.
Didier Seban – a lawyer representing Estelle’s father, Eric Mouzin, who has made it his life’s mission to identify his daughter’s kidnapper – told French radio: “We’ve been convinced for a long time that this is the main lead. We were convinced all the evidence led to Michel Fourniret and that this wasn’t followed up, which is why we are angry.”
He added: “The family’s priority is to be able to give Estelle a dignified funeral, so we need to find her body. The most important thing for the family is to know, and it’s extremely painful to know she was kidnapped by the worst serial killer our country has ever known.”
Estelle was walking home from school on 9 January 2003 when she disappeared from the village of Guermantes, east of Paris. For 15 years, her picture hung in police stations across the country but investigators were at a loss to discover what had happened to her.
Fourniret had been known to the police for attacks on children since the 1960s. In 1984 he was jailed for sexually attacking and raping 11 minors in the Paris region but was released three years later.
He and Olivier spent almost 20 years moving around France and Belgium where he continued kidnapping and killing. The pair were arrested in 2003 after a 17-year-old girl escaped from Fourniret’s car and described him and the vehicle to police.
Olivier was later found guilty of complicity in five murders and jailed for life with a minimum sentence of 28 years.
In February 2018, Fourniret admitted to killing Parrish, who was from Gloucester. She was on a year’s placement from her French degree course at Leeds University when she disappeared on 16 May 1990 from the Burgundy town of Auxerre. Her naked body was found in the River Yonne, three miles outside the town, the following day. She had been raped, beaten and strangled.
Fourniret also killed the wife of a former cellmate – a heroin dealer who had hidden a number of gold bars. After recovering the gold bars, Fourniret used them to buy a property in the Ardennes.
Detectives ruled him out of being involved in Estelle’s disappearance after Olivier told officers he was at home with her and had telephoned his son, a call confirmed by phone records.
However, this year, Olivier, 71, who has repeatedly given contradictory information to police, retracted the alibi and told investigating magistrates her former husband had snatched, raped and strangled Estelle and she had made the telephone call. She repeated this last week.
The instructing magistrate, Sabine Kheris, will interview Fourniret, 78, on Tuesday and Wednesday, in the hope he can shed some light on Estelle’s disappearance and allow her family to finally lay her, and the 17-year mystery of her disappearance, to rest.
